Chad Piekarz, energy consultant for NV Energy, inspects a heating system in the attic of a home in southeast Reno. / Provided to the Reno Gazette-Journal

Watch your water heater

Check your water heater thermostat. The recommended setting is usually the largest marker on the dial, to the left of “warm” on this unit. When going on vacation, turn to “vacation.”

Install a water heater blanket around your water heater. / Provided to the Reno Gazette-Journal

HOME ENERGY AUDITS

DO IT YOURSELFTo do your own energy audit, go to www.nvenergy.com and click on the "energy audit" link on the home page.SCHEDULE AN AUDITTo schedule a home energy audit with NV Energy, call 775-834-4444.

MAGGIE'S TO-DO LIST AFTER AUDIT

Replace the weather-stripping around the front door.

Install a fan in the open foyer.

Put R-6 foam inserts into the backside of our garage door.

Look into insulating shutters.

Call someone out to do preventative maintenance on the furnace and air-conditioner.

GO FLORESCENT
A compact florescent bulb at left, and a conventional bulb in a ceiling fan. The shapes of compact florescent bulbs are now available in decorator styles to get away from the coil look. The bulbs use about one-fourth of the energy and last years longer.
MOVE THE AIR
Ceiling fans that rotate with the air flow towards the ceiling and help distribute heat trapped high in the room and bring it down. Set fans to clockwise during the winter so warm air is pushed down. / Provided to the Reno Gazette-Journal

I fully expected the taped-up cat door to be blamed. But Chad Piekarz of NV Energy, who did a recent energy audit on my home, let me know it was a slew of causes, not just one, contributing to what I considered to be a high monthly electric and gas bill.

"It really does break down to a lot of different things," said Piekarz, an energy consultant.

I had called NV Energy seeking an answer as to why our winter bills were averaging $250 a month for a 1,412 square-foot home built in 1997 when I knew people who had larger or older homes but smaller bills.

"We're myth busters," Piekarz said.

I was about to find that out.

Piekarz, who has been with NV Energy for nine years, has instruction or certifications in everything from duct work to insulation to heating and air condition systems. Forget oxygen; what he breathes are letters, such as Es and Rs and other co-efficients related to energy.

Consider this: He takes one look at my sliding glass doors and begins talking about E-values. He looks at my garage doors and talks of R-6 foam inserts.

He is a scientist at heart. I am a budgeter, and while he talks values, I wonder if the foam inserts are similar to those I used in my high school science fair project displays and could simply be bought at Michaels.

There is a demand for energy audits this time of year. Piekarz and Matt Wagner, the other energy consultant from NV Energy, are the two people who respond to requests. They do audits of residential and commercial buildings and cover a service area of 5,000-square miles ranging from Lake Tahoe to Elko to Tonopah.

The audits are free, but there is often a wait before either can make it out. Piekarz and Wagner have about 260 pending requests. The audits generally take an hour, but they can take longer depending on the size of the home or related energy issues.

The two are prepared.

At the beginning of my audit, I try to hand Piekarz my last three NV Energy bills. He stops me.

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"I have all your information here," he said tapping a manila folder. "I've even seen that you've called in before."

Oh, great. That was when I tried to convince the customer service representative to send out another person to check the meter, kind of a second opinion, if you will.

While Piekarz isn't psychic, he is intuitive about people's energy use just by looking at their records. They are a profile of sorts. He tells me he knew we don't use an electric heater because high electrical usage isn't reflected on our bills.

We talk about the thermostat, and I talk about how we keep it set to a "cold" 64 degrees during the day and an even "colder" 60 degrees at night.

He tells me to drop the temperature to 58 degrees at night and to replace the thermostat with a programmable one.

"(Efficiency) all starts from the thermostat right off the bat," he said.

And as he begins walking around and looking at things in the home, I begin to realize my husband and I have work ahead of us. Using compact fluorescent lights and taking advantage of NV Energy's offer of a free water heater blanket isn't enough.

There is weather stripping that needs to be replaced, a ceiling fan that needs to be put in the open foyer to push warm air down and insulation that needs to be checked for buckling.

"I create all sorts of husband to-do lists," Piekarz said.

Energy-efficiencyis not whether you have enough layers of purple duct-tape strapped to the back side of the cat door. It's an overall and comprehensive approach. A world view, if you will.

It involves a philosophy of willingness: to replace the seals in the recessed kitchen lighting; to turn the water boiler switch to the "vacation" option (yes, it really exists) when you leave for a few days; to never never close off the register in an unused room because it prevents air from making it to the return register and back to the mother furnace.

It's also a matter of spending a little bit of money on prevention, such as having the furnace serviced every two years instead of waiting for a switch to go out and the house to plunge into Siberian cold.

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"Preventative maintenance ups efficiency up to 5 percent," he said.

But sometimes, Piekarz tells me, they will find just one thing creating an increase in energy use in a home, but that's more of a rarity than anything else.

"We enjoy finding those (cases)," he said. "We call it a victory."

I wonder if, as attuned as he is to energy, if he can just stop thinking about it, if he can go over to a friend's house and not instantly see all the issues.

"It's hard to turn off," he said. "There's a lot of stuff you just don't know. You can spend a lot of time dissecting this stuff."

Toward the end of the audit, Piekarz climbs up into the attic to check the efficiency rating on my furnace, the original one in the home. I'm disappointed, but not surprised to hear that it's rated at 80 percent efficiency.

He pops his head down and tells me some furnaces are made to be 96.6 percent efficient and this might be the reason some of my friends have smaller bills but larger or older homes.

Something is becoming clear: while my husband and I have many small home improvements to make before next winter, I'm no longer blaming the cat door.